Abu Dhabi’s Offlimits aims to become global player

The inaugural edition of Offlimits festival took place in Abu Dhabi on Saturday (26 April), boasting a line up including Ed Sheeran, One Republic, Faithless and Kaiser Chiefs alongside local DJs.

And having attracted a crowd of 32,000 for the one-day event, organiser Sia Farr, CEO of UAE-based Theory Eleven Entertainment has his sights already set beyond the Yas Island event.

“We set out to create something that’s never been done before in UAE, and set a baseline for a legacy project that could last for many years,” he says. “The cornerstone of the idea was that we have enough talent here that, harnessed in the right way, we can build something that the rest of the world wants to engage with, rather than us always consuming or importing IP to UAE.”

Farr reached out to set designer Florian Wieder who conceptualised Adele’s open air Munich shows. “I loved what he did in Germany and Florian took a very minimalistic, futuristic approach to what Offlimits could look like.”

The result was a four-stage festival with innovative and highly specced stage design, the curved LED wall of the main stage bearing a resemblance to Adele’s Munich residency. And the development of the festival brand underwent a similarly thorough process.

“We commissioned a lot of different designers globally but in the end it was a local designer who’s half Indian, half Emirati, who really got it,” says Farr. “It was testament to what I thought about Offlimits in general – that we have enough talent locally to be able to put something strong together, but they’ve never been given the platform or the chance.”

“There’s a stigma connected to festivals, and we worked hard on cleaning that up and putting something together that engaged everyone”

On the night, Farr said that potential partners from India, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia all attended what was badged as the region’s “biggest open format music festival”. The Etihad Park site, which also hosts Wireless and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix’s post race concerts included a mix of GA (75% of tickets), premium standing (20%) and suites (5%). Unsurprisingly for the region, it was the suites that sold out first.

The market does really well for super premium products, Farr says. “The top end always moves very fast and the craft comes in the mid tier, to price it in a way that everyone would like to engage and they see value in it. So that’s what we try to do in terms of pricing; to make it affordable.”

Offlimits dealt with challenges alien to most European organisers including high temperatures and pre-event security checks, but Farr believes its greatest obstacle was confronting historical market failures.

“There’s a stigma connected to festivals, and we worked hard on cleaning that up and putting something together that engaged everyone,” he says. “Historically, our market has been under-delivering and over-promising so it was difficult to make the end user believe that this lineup [was] actually happening.”

Next year’s Offlimits is scheduled to return next April, but in the meantime, Farr is focussing on growing the brand beyond the region. “The idea was to do something world class that stands the test of time; something really top level that’s created here but then exported worldwide.”

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